新編大學英語第四冊unit2 Text D: How We Can Change Our Wasteful Habits
How We Can Change Our Wasteful Habits
1 For 34 years, I have kept a lonely watch on waste in Washington. I have seen misspent millions disappear down the federal drain, appalling sums wasted on foolish projects, huge amounts lavished on programs adopted more for expediency than effectiveness.
2 I have reported on widespread duplication and disorganization in government purchasing programs. Our national government frequently buys with its right hand what it already holds in its left. Millions are spent, for example, to reduce farm surpluses exceeded only by the millions spent to make farmland more productive. Tax dollars are blown to the winds and blasted into space with little attention to actual needs.
3 Every disappearing tax dollar is painfully extracted from citizens who don't begrudge money for the nation's needs but hate to see it wasted. Yet the spendthrift habit of Washington merely reflects the wasteful ways of the populace. After consulting scores of experts in such diverse fields as energy conservation, consumer affairs and finance, I have selected our most wasteful habits.
4 The relentless rise of gas prices still hasn't persuaded most Americans to abandon their extravagant driving habits. During the morning and evening rush-hours, for example, traffic jams of near-empty cars burn up gas, oil and tires. Statistically, each commuter car carries 1.3 persons, which means the driver is the sole occupant in four of five cars.
5 The average American drives off in his car seven times a day, usually on spur-of-the-moment trips or unnecessary errands. Better kitchen planning, for example, could cut down on the number of trips to the supermarket. These could also be combined with visits to doctors and other merchants. Just a little foresight, if practiced on a national scale, could bring huge savings.
6 The typical American also won't give up his fuel-inefficient super-model, which consumes twice the amount of gas necessary to run a smaller car. Last year, Americans purchased large cars that averaged 13 to 15 miles a gallon, although smaller cars were available that got 30 to 35 miles a gallon.
7 A typical consumer runs up his grocery bill by purchasing items he neither needs nor intends to buy. An astonishing 75 percent of all grocery shoppers make at least one impulse purchase every time they enter the supermarket. This is the estimate of Barbara Salsbury, who has spent 20 years studying food marketing.
8 The packaging and displays are designed to lure consumers into buying products they don't need. About a third of these impulse purchases, says Salsbury, are made because the item is attractively wrapped.
9 While millions starve elsewhere, Americans throw away food. Agriculture Department studies indicate that the average housewife dumps huge quantities of leftovers down the garbage disposal or lets them spoil in the refrigerator.
10 One survey determined that as much as one-third of the food hauled home from the grocery store eventually is thrown out. The worst offenders, other studies note, are persons who habitually load their plates with more than they can eat.
11 The story is the same at the nation's restaurants, which often try to justify steepening prices by adding a little to the portions. Thus an appalling amount of uneaten food winds up in the garbage.
12 The fast-food places, where an increasing number of Americans eat, also are wasteful. Consumers spend twice as much for takeout food than if they prepared the food at home.
13 The American fondness for dogs, cats and birds has produced a multibillion-dollar industry that encourages owners to pamper their pets. The pet-food industry alone grosses $4 billion a year, much of it spent on treats for pets and "enriched" food products.
14 For whatever sociologists wish to make of it, we spend more for pet foods than for baby foods. Out of a weekly grocery budget of $48.33, according to a study by a research concern called Supermarket Business, the average family spends 77 cents to feed its pets but only 17 cents to feed the baby, excluding cereals and packaged milk and milk substitutes.
15 The poodle parlor business is also booming, with doting customers paying as much as $500 million a year for Fifi's hairdos, shampoos and grooming aids. Another $1.5 billion goes for pet accessories such as clothing and toys. At the end, pet cemeteries take in about $3 million a year. It costs a grieving owner about $250 for an average coffin and burial site.
16 Every day, trees must be chopped down to fulfill each individual's need for paper. Yet too many Americans use paper as a dispensable product and throw away several pounds per day. In Los Angeles alone, millions of pounds of paper are discarded or burned daily rather than saved for recycling.
17 Americans also have a bad habit of tossing waste paper and other rubbish in parks, on streets and in streams, ignoring clearly marked trash containers. The cost of picking up all this litter, exclusive of regular garbage collections, totals about $1 billion a year.
18 Water shortages are beginning to bother many areas. The main cause of the diminishing supply: the bathrooms of America. Americans love to run hot water down the drain while they shower and shave. If every American would merely shorten his daily shower by five minutes, the savings in both water and energy would be enormous.
19 The biggest water waster of them all, however, is the home toilet. Every flush, say engineers, uses about 4 gallons. This great flood is often summoned to swirl away a lonely cigarette butt or a used facial tissue. (Inexpensive devices are obtainable for householders to reduce the water flow.
20 America generates more hot air than any nation on earth at a terrible cost in fuel and money. In response to all the official appeals to save energy, there has been a patriotic rush to seal windows and doors. But Energy Department officials tell me that patriotism ends if we have to sacrifice comfort; most Americans simply won't keep their thermostats down in the winter and up in the summer
21 If Americans would adjust their thermostats just one degree, say the officials, it would save more energy than all the insulation in the world. For the big savings can come only in the homes, which consume twice the energy burned by America's factories and office buildings.
22 Great savings would be possible in buildings, of course, by eliminating central heating and lighting. Sometimes all the lights in a building are kept on all night in order to light a few rooms. But it's the millions of homes, with furnaces or air-conditioners running full blast, that cause the problem. A couple of $20 window fans, for example, could keep a bedroom cool on summer nights and save as much as 40 percent on the energy bill.
23 We belong to a bloated, throwaway society that constitutes only 4.2 percent of the world's population but consumes 40 percent of its resources. It is up to us, the people, to stop the national wasteful habits.
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